[Sigia-l] card sorting: dealing with multiple placements

[Todd R.Warfel]

Typically, they won't. I've done hundreds of card sorts over the past 8 
years and can count on one hand the number of times when a group has 
put the same item into two categories.

There are two key elements to a successful card sort:
- do them in groups of three people (typically 4-5 groups of three is 
sufficient)
- keep quite during the sort - don't give hints to the participants. 
You're there to observe, not to guide.

Occasionally, you may need more than 4-5 groups depending on the 
complexity of the product. But in my experience, 5 groups is the right 
number on the average to get a successful baseline for organization. 
Also, three people in the group seems to be the optimal number. Groups 
of three work better than individuals, as individuals can tend to get 
stuck. With a group of three, when one person is confused, the other 
two will help them figure it out.

You can read more about this in a paper I wrote titled "Modeling 
Organization - Methods for Increasing a System's Findability" 
http://messagefirst.com/resources/ you'll find a link to the paper half 
way down the page.

On Friday, May 23, 2003, at 05:39 PM, Jesse Wilbur wrote:

> ...she asked me how I'd handle it if people wanted to put one site 
> into more than one category. Since I've never actually done one, I 
> thought I'd toss the question to the list.
>
> Any other tips (outside what you can find in the polar bear book) 
> would be welcome as well.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jesse Wilbur
> MSIS candidate
> UNC SILS

Cheers!

Todd R. Warfel

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